Down the Rabbit-Hole
by Astrid Goes For A Spin
Summary: "You were damn near starved, muttering to yourself. I practically had to force-feed you." "I remember."


**Let's celebrate! I found a way to recover that awesome dividing line. (Look down.) For those of you who have been struggling with this as well, go to "live preview" of one of your own stories with the line and copy-paste. Magic. **

**Okay, so this episode? "Plutonium is Forever"? Right in the feels. Right in the feels. I have so many more thoughts about Happy now. And Happy and Paige's awesome awkward friendship, and Happy's...oh, just read. (Sob)**

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><p>For so long, Happy was the only woman. In the garage. In their company. In their lives, really; Sylvester and Toby repelled girls without trying, and even Walter's curls and that almost-erased Irish brogue couldn't keep them around for long.<p>

Happy was and always has been a tomboy, pure and simple. Pants over skirts, boots over heels, black over pink, but she was still a _woman_.

Even though she is a genius, she is a woman, and she can't help but take care of the men in her life.

Toby's easy, thankfully. He's enabled, but not specifically with _math_, and his rabbit-hole is more like a pothole in a poorly maintained state road than Sylvester's deep well and Walter's Marianas Trench. The focus – and disinterest in food – only lasts as long as something interestingly human is going on, and luckily, people only do things that are interesting (unusual, incomprehensible) to Toby once in a blue moon.

Sylvester's no picnic, that's for sure. He can go for so long without something intriguing him – really intriguing him – but once it does, he's lining up chalk and inventing formulas, and he's gone, hook, line, and sinker. Sometimes it's good for him, to "get lost in the numbers"; it's cleansing. And she usually doesn't have to pull him out, either, just hang around with hand sanitizer and fruit and listen when he comes back excitedly and tells her all about it.

But Walter…oh, there's a problem. His hair is short and clean now, there's flesh on him, and his cheeks are full. But she can remember his hair overgrown and lank and greasy with sweat. She can remember seeing his ribs through his shirts and his cheekbones taught under his skin. She remembers his small violence, the intensity, the verbal cruelty. She can remember Toby and Sylvester hovering in the background and she, just as scared shitless, using a forearm to keep his shoulders down and forcing his mouth open. Too many days of Walter spouting nonsense – not genius-level math, but genuine nonsense, about Collins and Walter himself being selfish and God knows what else – and too many days on the BRAT diet, too many days forcing him to drink PowerAde and snapping every pencil in the garage in half, trying to stop the endless math.

But Paige brings something brand new to Scorpion – responsibility, lots of it. Maturity. Emotion. A child: anchors. She asked Walter to stay out of rabbit-holes, for Ralph, and he will. He'll try, at least. Hard. Because that's what Walter does: never gives up, because he's sure he knows everything and it all has an answer – including himself.

If it does happen, though, and Walter falls down the rabbit-hole again, entranced by human behavior or mechanics, getting lost in the numbers or expanding on the theory of relativity, it's Paige's literal job on the payroll to drag him back out again. For herself. For Ralph. For Toby and Sylvester and Cave, for anyone who needs the help of his 197 IQ, and for Happy.

He'll come out without intentionally poisonous words and weakly swinging fists, without forcing her to force-feed him and keep him alive, finger-bruises lingering on his jaw for weeks. Because Paige has a formidable arsenal Happy never did: patience, kindness, and healthy ways to express emotion.

Walter will come out. They'll all be okay. For Paige, who'll never experience it, a _normal_, but they consider her one of their own anyway. For Ralph, whom they wish could experience the power of pure thought and yet hope will never have to. For each other.

With this kind of new support system behind her, Happy's thoughts move in an entirely different direction. She hasn't been down the rabbit-hole since she was a she was a kid – her work is physical, and her body forces her to stop. Her rabbit-holes only last as long as a good project does.

But she's got a paycheck in her pocket now and only rarely has something important to do: electric and water and food are givens, since Cabe re-entered Walter's life. And with Paige – the strongest woman, the most womanly woman, the most matronly woman – at her back and nothing to lose (she has so many unbelievable ideas that only need time, and focus), ready with that strong emotional rope – just like the rope she herself extended to Happy from Las Vegas air-ducts – to tug her back to the surface, Happy's thinking about planning a brief excursion down the rabbit-hole herself.


End file.
